As Old Bastard Time takes his toll, you learn to dread visiting the doctor, given that for every illness you own up to he'll almost certainly discover a brace more. So it was that having cured a stomach problem, my GP discovered my cholesterol was peaking and my liver was a touch inflamed. I didn't mind being put on a diet that would have depressed a fruitarian, but balked at the executive order not to touch any alcohol for the entire summer, no, not so much as a freezer-chilled beer served in a glass opaque with frost under the sultry Barcelonan sky.
Now, an alcoholic I am not. This I know because way back when, I was checked into a psychiatric hospital many of whose patients were bona fide dipsomaniacs whose confessions have kept the living daylights scared out of me to this day. But I do enjoy a beer or five, especially when the ups and downs of work leave my brain feeling like a trodden-on biscuit.
That notwithstanding, I clambered obediently onto the wagon, replacing beer with soft drinks (above all the insipid squash ambitiously called Aquarius). After just eight days I was tired, wired and bloated with cheap pop. I realised that without beer, I was going to get very sick indeed. I duly cracked a few, enjoying every aspect of the little beauties, from their discreet fizz through to the blissful way they massaged my tauter thoughts. Duly healed, the following Sunday I hoisted myself back onto the wagon and I am riding in it still and will continue to do so throughout the summer, much as the doctor ordered. After all, any desert can be crossed if it has a few oases - liquid first-aid kits, so to speak - lurking here and there.